Booklist
Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex —March 1824
Spring had come again in all its glory: blustering winds, lashing rains and always the peculiar English dampness that conspired to keep a person indoors far beyond the body’s patience for inactivity—at least his body’s. Stepan Shevchenko braced himself against the sea winds buffeting the bluffs. He peered through the eyepiece of his spyglass, searching the empty horizon.
Nothing yet.
He collapsed the spyglass with a frown. Still, it was far better to be out here amongst the elements than inside where he’d been for months. He had little tolerance for the indoors. He craved constant exercise, constant adventure, despite his efforts to tame himself to the more sedate rhythms of an Englishman’s life.
Two springs now he’d spent in Britain and yet in all that time he’d proved only that one could take the man out of Kuban, but one couldn’t take Kuban out of the man. The wildness of Kuban with its mountains and rivers called to the wildness within him, something he buried deep at his most primal self, something he’d been careful to suppress. It had become a secret identity, known only to him and those who knew him best: Nikolay, Ruslan, Illarion and Dimitri. Certainly, no one in London who did business with Prince Stepan Shevchenko would guess at it. To them, he was all that was proper. A boring word for someone whom many thought a boring man.
He preferred it that way. Proper was a very good cover. So good, in fact, he could even hide the wildness from himself. Sometimes, he almost believed the façade. But on days like today, when the wind blew through his hair, and the rain soaked his face, he knew better. He was still wild at heart; always running, always raging.
The horizon shimmered, the emptiness interrupted by the appearance of sails. Stepan smiled and lifted the spyglass again. It must be her—his ship, one of them. Through the eyepiece he sought out the name on the prow; the Lady Frances, a ship well known to be sponsored by Prince Stepan Shevchenko, bringing the latest Kubanian luxuries to London: lacquered trifle boxes with carefully painted scenes of Kubanian life on their lids, delicate birch wood carvings and the ever-entertaining Matryoshka dolls. A sense of tentative gratification rippled through him at the sight of the ship, followed by a clench of anticipation deep in his stomach. He moved his glass to take in the space behind the Lady Frances but the remainder of the horizon was empty.
Wait for it, he counselled himself. Impatience often bred unnecessary worry. He should not be concerned. Not yet. It was a good sign the Lady Frances was here. There was a satisfactory profit in her cargo once the duties were paid and a satisfaction of another sort, the sort that came from surrounding oneself with reminders of home. If he could not go to Kuban, he could bring Kuban to London. It was a type of cure for an odd homesickness for a place he’d not expected to miss, a place that didn’t hold good memories, but haunted him none the less now that he could never go back. But a man did not get rich, not like he had, on importing knick-knacks to decorate ladies’ parlours. No, the Lady Frances wasn’t the real prize. She was merely the decoy.
His
